


When Love Falls (Tom Holland x Reader)

by shxrirogers



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Movies - Raimi), Spider-Man - All Media Types, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Genre: Actor Tom Holland, Developing Relationship, F/M, Friendship, Friendship/Love, New York City, Pre-Relationship, Reader-Insert
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-19
Updated: 2019-05-19
Packaged: 2020-03-07 15:06:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,719
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18875635
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shxrirogers/pseuds/shxrirogers
Summary: A mutual visit to the same park in New York City resulted in Tom fantasizing about being in a relationship with you. The only problem? He saw you, but you didn’t see him and you left before he worked up the courage to introduce himself. Now, Tom is faced with a particularly troubling dilemma: How is he supposed to find you again in a city of eight million people when he doesn’t even know your name?





	When Love Falls (Tom Holland x Reader)

Most normal relationships nowadays begin with a simple “hello” while standing in line to check out at the grocery store or liking a post on someone’s Instagram page. A dinner and movie date might ensue, or a long thread of DM conversations before a “going steady” label or a change in one’s social media bio to “in a relationship.” It’s the twenty-first century for Pete's sake; for a relationship to begin any other way would be peculiar and out of sorts.

But, to be fair, when had Tom Holland, or his life, ever been normal?

For him, your relationship began the moment he first laid eyes on you. He was filming a project in New York City for a couple of months during the summer and rented an apartment on the south side of the island, just a train ride away from the apartment was a dog park he discovered and frequented with Tessa, his Bull Terrier. The grass in the park was emerald green and well fertilized; oak trees that had to have been planted more than one hundred years ago spanned the perimeter of the park, extending up and into the open air, cutting jagged edges out of the atmosphere, begging to be climbed and explored-- which is exactly what Tom decided to do.

What compelled him to perform such a task, he would never figure out, but he decided to blame it on a combination of his amateur parkour abilities and his boyish nature that was always poking at him to explore new places, no matter the risk or cost. On the first day he had a break from filming, he left Tessa at home so he could place his complete focus on the tree-climbing; he threw the hood of his sweatshirt up on his head and hopped aboard the subway for the short ride.

It was only natural of Tom to choose the tallest, most fruitful tree in the park to begin scaling once he got there. It probably should have proven more difficult than it was to get to the spot he decided he was going to make his own, but his early-twenty-something stature swung him up and about rather easily. The spot that he chose had multiple sturdy branches that sprouted out in all directions and provided the perfect nook to lay his blanket down and settle in with the book he brought, a book that certainly challenged his dyslexia but was too thrilling not to try and work through it. All was well for a couple of hours, what with the light breeze caressing his face and the warm sun shining through the leaves onto his skin, and he felt invisible, invincible, and at peace. He would have almost gone as far to say he was untouchable, even, like the anxiety of his career and the constant pressure of having to be something for someone all the time had completely disappeared. Tom was about thirty-seven pages into the mystery plot, thirty-seven pages into his blissful isolation, when the soft humming of an old Blink-182 song by a strong voice floated up into earshot. 

That’s when he peered down and saw you.

You were making yourself comfortable with your own blanket and book at the bottom of the trunk. Your golden retriever, Winston, was laying contently beside you. That damn Blink-182 song had been stuck in your head for days ever since you walked past a hole-in-the-wall bar that was hosting their annual emo night, and no matter how much you sang it, some notes on the pitch, others off-key, you couldn’t let it go. So, it followed you here as you settled under the very tree Tom was nestled in to get a head start on an assignment for school and allow for Winston to get out and enjoy the fresh air, but because of the overgrown branches and monstrous-sized leaves, you didn’t know he was there. You sat contently for a time combing through your work as Tom’s mouth grew increasingly more dry while looking at you. He knew he shouldn’t have been doing that, watching you while you were completely ignorant to his presence, but he was drawn to your aura, the radiating confidence, and gentleness that simultaneously oozed from your pores. He’d never experienced anyone like you before, and certainly not under these bizarre circumstances, either. 

How long his attention was gauged on you, he didn’t know, but when he snapped out of his lovestruck daze that had drool falling from the corner of his mouth, he realized he was watching you pack your bag and untie Winston from the tree to go on your way. Tom should have done something, damn it, but the thought of making himself known to you shrunk his confidence down to minuscule size and caused him to freeze. What in the world could he have possibly said: 'Hi, I’ve been watching you from up in this tree for hours and I think you are the loveliest girl I’ve ever seen, and I mean this in the least creepy way possible?' Piss off. He could never. You wandered down the park trail and out of his sight and Tom’s heart fell at the realization that he’d never see you again.

If someone stuck a probe in Tom’s brain and used a projector to cast his thoughts on a loop, that person would only see you. You began to invade every aspect of his life: Tom closed his eyes in the shower to shampoo his hair, and there you were behind his eyelids. He passed an extra on set with a hair color similar to yours and his vision suddenly blurred. He heard your Blink-182 song in his dreams and woke up to believe you were right next to him in bed, curled up and sleeping soundly. It was the spaces between moments where you came to fruition-- sat next to him on the subway as someone else left the car, working behind the counter at the Starbucks on 8th Avenue right as walked out of the door with his coffee, passing him on the staircase as he made the climb to the floor of his apartment. You were there until you weren’t. A moment in time Tom couldn’t hold onto, a figment of his imagination that flashed before him and dissipated before he could resonate that he wasn’t actually looking at anything at all.

“You’ve got it bad, dude,” Harry stated over FaceTime one evening after twisting Tom’s arm behind his back to get him to explain why he couldn’t hold a proper conversation with his younger brother. “You saw that girl one time and you’re so preoccupied with her that you can’t even talk to me for more than thirty seconds before trailing off and drooling on yourself.”

“I am not drooling!” Tom protested although he couldn’t be sure, so he turned away from the camera to swipe at his chin just in case. No drool. A bastard, Harry was.  
“You might as well be. You talk about her like she put the constellations in the sky herself.  
”  
“C’mon, dude, you’ve got to give me a little bit more credit than that.”

Harry began fiddling with the cord of the headphones he was using to talk to Tom. “Hey, I didn’t say it was a bad thing to feel this way about someone, man. I just think you need to learn a bit more about her to ensure those feelings are constituted. Maybe you should, like, make yourself known to her first and say hello. Don’t keep looming over her head and ogling at her like a fucking weirdo.”

“Just how do you expect me to do that, Mr. 'I Know Everything About Love?'”

“Well, for starters, have you considered going back to the park to find her? She may be a frequent flyer.”

Tom sat silently, his eyes wandering off his phone screen in embarrassment.

“Ok,” Harry sighed, feigning annoyance. “Let’s start there. You should head to the park on the same day and time as before and make yourself comfortable near where you first saw her. I mean, this is a total shot in the dark and you really might never see her again and end up alone forever--”

“Dude!!”

“--Or, you might just get lucky and see her again. But bro, a bit of advice: If you do see her, the only way you’re going to form any kind of relationship with her is by making sure she knows you exist. Say something to her if you see her.”

And somehow, by some crazy twist of fate, when Tom followed Harry’s advice and settled himself in his same spot in the same tree on another day of rest from filming, you showed up shortly after to settle in your same spot under the same tree. Tom couldn’t believe it. He was genuinely at a loss for words. The sound of your familiar humming of the same Blink-182 song gave your presence away before the sight of you did, and just like last time, he froze in his spot, eyes fixed on you, mouth slightly agape. To hell with the novel he was reading; you were far more pleasurable a sight to lay his eyes on than any story could have ever been, and he immediately began to wrestle with the incredibly creepy task he was performing. He just needed to go down there and say hello, to introduce himself as Harry said, but because fear was coursing through his veins, he simply watched you again for as long you were down there. This time, you were on the phone with your mother, and through this Tom was able to gather a shocking amount of information about you, including your mother’s name, your middle name, the latest summer classes you were taking at Columbia, and the fact that you have three younger brothers, just like Tom has, who seem to be knee-deep in their fair share of shenanigans, just like Tom’s brothers would be. The similarities between your two families made him smile, but before he was ready to see you go, you were up and on your way again with Winston, the connection Tom felt a fleeting moment he wished he could make tangible and wrap his fingers around forever.

For the next few weeks, Tom stayed up in the safety of his tree where he knew you wouldn’t find him. Every other Tuesday seemed to be the day was when his filming schedule opened up and allowed him to find you at the park by the tree. Every other Tuesday, for the next couple of weeks, Tom would fight to work up the courage to talk to you, and every other Tuesday for the next few weeks, he would lose. This was how he came to practice calling you his own.

However, for you, the relationship began a bit differently. 

You’d been coming to the dog park with Winston on a bi-weekly basis whenever you didn’t have to be in summer classes or at work. You would have liked to have visited more often; a one bedroom apartment on campus wasn’t conducive with the lifestyle of an energetic five-year-old golden, but you made do with the free time you had and Winston wasn’t the type to protest. There was a particular tree you’d grown fond of (no pun intended) in the park for its sturdy trunk and strong frame, as well as the sweet shade it provided on humid New York summer afternoons, and you made it your temporary squatting place on the days you could make it out there. 

On a Tuesday in mid-June, you settled down in your usual spot with a blanket to rest on and a bowl of water for Winston to lap up when he needed. The moment your back fell against the tree, you huffed, livid and nearly sick over the prospect of failing the physics test you took earlier that day. Science was never your thing to begin with, and why the hell did a liberal arts university require so many science classes of you to graduate, anyway? 

It was a particularly windy day, so the constant rustling of the trees didn’t seem out of place against the bright blue sky, but it was about forty-five minutes into mindlessly scrolling on social media to distract yourself from your unappealing emotions that you realized something was off: A shadow that was shaped oddly like a man was stretching across the grass in front of you. You peered over the top of your phone to look for the source of the shadow that was accompanied by the feeling of eyes blazing into your skin, but before you could stand up to search for the person that was causing your hair to stand on end, you felt a sharp object clip your shoulder while it fell to the ground.   
“Ow!” You shouted, your hand immediately crossing over your body to cover your already-bruising skin. The object bounced a couple of feet away before flopping inanimately, and it took you a couple of glances to register what had just come down on you. 

“A book? What the-”

“Oh my goodness, sweetheart, I’m so sorry!”

A boyish voice with an English accent coming from above interrupted the expletive that almost rolled off your tongue, and you looked up to see that it belonged to a man scurrying frantically down the tree. You started to stand while the man’s sneaker-covered feet landed on the grass. He began dusting off his jeans until he realized you were cradling yourself in pain, and within that moment he came to your rescue, apologizing profusely.

“I was up in the tree reading and my leg began to fall asleep, so I shifted my bum and the book slid off my lap and fell onto you before I had a chance to catch it! Please forgive me, miss, it was a sincere accident.” That boy was telling lies and you knew by the way his pupils dilated with every inhale of breath he took between his long-winded sentences. Even so, though, his dilated pupils were swimming in golden brown irises, and as his palms grazed the bare skin on your arms to offer some kind of assistance for your injury, you felt your skin warm at the touch and the adrenaline in your bloodstream settle. 

“Were you…” you paused, trying to process the fact that the shadow that had been watching you moments ago substantiated into someone rather handsome and quirky, “Were you up there watching me the whole time I’ve been here?”

“I, uh...See, well, I, uh--” 

So that’s a yes. “Have you been watching me the entire time I’ve been coming here?”

“No! Absolutely not. You see, I, uh, I heard that Blink-182 song you were humming and I… uh… I rather like that song, and so I, well, I…uh--”

“You’re a really bad liar, you know.”

The boy stopped stammering and sighed. “I know how incredibly creepy that sounds, but I promise I wasn’t stalking you. Every time you left the park, I didn’t follow; I had no idea where you were heading home to. I only observed you when you were under this tree because I was so enamored by you… Oh my gosh, this sounds so awful. Jesus…”

You giggled and felt your cheeks blush. “Is that slightly creepy? Yes. Absolutely. But is it also oddly endearing? You bet.”

The boy’s shoulders dropped in relief at the sound of your laughter as he extended his hand out to you. “Anyway, my name is Tom. I should have told you that the first time I saw you here. I apologize for the scare and for the bruised shoulder.”

You took his hand and gave it a firm shake, the warmth radiating through you again. 

“Y/N.”

“‘Y/N,’” Tom repeated. “Nice to officially meet you.”

“Likewise-- Er, uh, sorta.”

You both laughed and took a seat on your blanket.

“So, Tom, have you always had a knack for climbing trees? You seem to be pretty good at it, seeing as how you got so far up I couldn’t see you.”

He broke out into a grin. “Oh, love, you don’t even know the half of it.”

Xx.

**Author's Note:**

> If you enjoyed this one-shot, please consider supporting my plan to go to grad school and earn my MFA in fiction by donating to my Ko-Fi (https://ko-fi.com/shxrirogers)! All of the money will go toward future graduate school expenses.
> 
> Thank you!  
> -Rose Katherine


End file.
